Vermont Welcomes You to the Nuclear Reception Center!

Egads!

Posted at Vermont Commons:

Today's Brattleboro Reformer (July 7th) contains one of the most terrifying, stupifying examples yet of the use of framing language to manipulate public attitudes about nuclear energy and corporate privilege. I'm referring to the article about a proposed "reception center" in Wilmington, to "welcome" evacuees from an eventual catastrophic accident at Vermont Yankee. "Refugee evacuation center" or "Crisis staging center" would be more appropriate terms. "Reception center" conjures up images of the Vermont Welcome Center on I-91 - something pleasant, hospitable, and routine. An evacuation of Windham County and parts of Cheshire and Franklin Counties due to a serious nuclear accident (possibly caused by a terrorist act) would involve the movement of hundreds of thousands of shocked, panic-stricken, disoriented, separated, and possibly radiation-sick citizens and neighbors - in a word, us - from areas we would probably never be able to return to. Besides the loss of private property totalling in the billions - not covered by insurance, by the way, due to federal legislation that waives it - it could mean the death of many communities. Look at what one hurricane did to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast communities, without the danger of lingering radioactivity. If that "reception center" ever had to be used, with its 100+ employees earning $12.50 an hour in two daily shifts (talk about waving a carrot!), it would most likely mean no more Heifer's Parade, no more swimming in the West River, no more hikes up Mt. Wantastiquet, no more Farmer's Market, no more Cheshire County Fair, no more Guilford Fair, no more figure skating in Greenfield, no more Keene Pumpkin Festival, no more Newfane flea markets or Winter Carnival or Gallery Walk or evening strolls across the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls. The Five Colleges would scatter to the four winds, and the Pioneer Valley would generate a new generation of "Massies" like the Dust Bowl generated Okies. (Would Vermont refugees be nicknamed "Vermin"?) These communities and the centuries-old cultures they have given rise to would die. "Reception center" is too mild. That's like calling the gas chambers "Enhanced-air ventillation lounges" and Camp Delta at the Guantanamo Bay military base an "Islamic youth contemplation retreat".

I am reminded of what Aldous Huxely wrote in 1958 in "Brave New World Revisited": "In their propaganda today's dictators rely for the most part on repetition, suppression, and rationalization - the repetition of catchwords which they wish to be accepted as true, the suppression of facts which they wish to be ignored, the arousal and rationalization of passions which may be used in the interests of the Party and the State. As the art and science of manipulation come to be better understood, the dictators of the future will doubtless learn to combine these techniques with the non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to the maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of democratic institutions."

Huxley wrote that forty-eight years ago. Are we there yet?

Reject "Reception Center" and every other tricky, sanitized expression that the powerful use to put one over on you, and casually wreck your life.

Gag. Choke. Wheeze.